The game board looks like the map of Israel. On the west side, there are some high tech companies; in the south, near the Dead Sea, there is a medical center and a spa hotel. The rules are similar to Monopoly: It is an economic strategy game, where players buy companies and try to build … Continue reading →

SAN FRANCISCO — Limmud FSU, the nonprofit that organizes conferences for Russian-speaking Jews around the world, is scaling back its activities due to lack of financing. The Limmud FSU gathering in New York, which attracted more than 1,000 participants this year, will be shortened from a three-day Shabbat weekend to a one day event next … Continue reading →

Since toppling statues of Joseph Stalin, post-Soviet Russians have taken to building monuments to a different national hero in recent years: Tsar Nicholas II, the last emperor of the Russian Empire. More than 25 shrines honoring Nicholas II have been erected since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Declared a saint and a … Continue reading →

OAKLAND, California — Almost every chair in the Oakland Marriott’s windowless conference hall was full last Saturday evening when Russian-speaking Jews came to meet one of the most successful members of their own community: Jan Koum, founder of WhatsApp. The young Ukraine-born billionaire came to the Limmud conference for Jews from the Former Soviet Union … Continue reading →

A recent Molotov cocktail attack on a Moscow Jewish community center can be attributed to a new movie about the Russian Tsar, the Jewish community believes. Security footage caught a man tossing two Molotov cocktails over the wall of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia building overnight on September 12. Fortunately, no one was … Continue reading →

Credit: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters A Russian lawmaker speaking on TV recently described something amazing happening to a statue of the last Russian emperor in Crimea: The stone torso had begun to weep. PRI could not yet independently verify such an occurrence. But the symbolism of the politician’s remarks was weighty. “People bring their ill children to … Continue reading →

This fall, the Jewish community in Russia is commemorating an often overlooked result of the Russian Revolution — the achievement of equal rights for the country’s Jews. Exactly one century ago, in 1917, the Russian government signed a decree establishing equality for all religions and ethnicities. The edict officially abolished the Pale of Settlement — … Continue reading →